Astronomers find unexpected 'storm' at galaxy's core

In this composite image of the Teacup Galaxy, the green colors show the starlight, the blue colors show the gas and the red/yellow colors show the radio emission. The bright yellow blobs in the center of the image show where the radio “jets,” launched by the black hole, are driving into the gas and accelerating it to 1,000 km/s (200,000 miles per hour). The giant bubbles also are being inflated by the central black hole. This demonstrates that the central black hole is having a catastrophic effect on its home galaxy. Credit: C. Harrison, A. Thomson; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) found surprisingly energetic activity in what they otherwise considered a "boring" galaxy, and their discovery provides important insight on how supermassive black holes can have a catastrophic effect on the galaxies in which they reside.

"It appears that a supermassive black hole is explosively heating and blasting around the gas in this galaxy and, as a result, is transforming it from an actively star-forming galaxy into one devoid of gas that can no longer form stars," said Chris Harrison, the lead-author of the study, from The Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University in the U.K.

Two major types of galaxies are spirals, rich in gas and actively forming stars, and ellipticals, gas-poor and with very little star formation. The massive ellipticals, astronomers think, started life as actively star-forming galaxies. Powerful jets and winds of material, powered by supermassive black holes at the galaxies' centers, are believed to remove or destroy the raw material needed for continued star formation.

"For many years, we've seen direct evidence of this happening in galaxies that are extremely bright when viewed through radio telescopes. These, rare, radio-bright galaxies harbor powerful jets, launched at the black hole, that plow into the surrounding gas," Harrison said. "However, to understand how all of galaxies in our Universe formed, we needed to know if these same processes occur in less extreme galaxies that better represent the majority. This was the focus of our study," he added.

As part of an ongoing investigation, Harrison and his colleagues used the VLA to study a galaxy labelled J1430+1339, also known as the "Teacup," because of its appearance. About 1.1 billion light-years from Earth, the galaxy had been identified as having characteristics typical of galaxies with a central black hole actively consuming material. Follow-on observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope also revealed evidence that the Teacup has the appearance of a elliptical-type galaxy, but is surrounded by gas that suggests it is still in the process of transforming from a star-forming galaxy.

The VLA observations showed that the galaxy has "bubbles" extending from 30,000 to 40,000 light-years on each side of its core, along with smaller jet-like structures, about 2,000 light-years in size. These jet-like structures are located at the position where visible-light observations indicate gas is being accelerated to speeds up to about 1,000 kilometers per second.

Alasdair Thomson, another Durham astronomer involved in the study, said, "These radio observations have revealed that the central black hole is whipping up a storm at the center of this galaxy, by launching powerful jets that are accelerating the gas in the host galaxy and are colliding with the gas on larger scales. This is the same kind of powerful process we'd previously seen in rare, extremely radio-luminous galaxies. The incredible capabilites of the VLA have allowed us to discover that these processes can occur in the more-common, radio-faint galaxies, as long as you look hard enough."

"This 'storm' in the 'Teacup' means that the jet-driven process in which a black hole is removing or destroying star-forming material may be much more typical than we knew before, and could be a crucial piece in the puzzle of understanding how the galaxies we see around us were formed," Harrison said. Harrison and his collaborators now have observed eight more such objects with the VLA and are analyzing their data to see if the others show similar characteristics.

Harrison worked with a team of astronomers from the U.K., the U.S., and Chile. They presented their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

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16 comments

It appears that a supermassive black hole is explosively heating and blasting around the gas in this galaxy and, as a result, is transforming it from an actively star-forming galaxy into one devoid of gas that can no longer form stars

This is consistent with NASA computer simulations of Galactic Collisions during the time frame right after the first collision and the merger happen. When the Black Holes feed they explode enormous amounts of energy out from the core which literally disintegrates the galaxies, leaving behind only the densest materials.

cantdrive85

Well, consider if it's not a 'galaxy merger" it could produce a more stable explosive scenario if the SMBH ate something smaller, like a globular cluster, instead of the core of another galaxy. In such case the "tails" or "bubbles" would be expected to be less extreme and the overall energy level less than a full galaxy merger. the processes effecting the Black Hole would be the same, but just on a smaller scale so that the galaxy isn't literally blown apart, but just sweeps away stray dust.

The hotter the accretion disk gets the more likely surrounding matter begins to be blown away by jets, which puts an upper limit on the growth rate of a black hole under normal, non-galaxy collision scenarios.

I would expect to see some sort of "sorting" in the material in galaxies, so that heavier atoms shouldn't be accelerated away as quickly as lighter atoms in the clouds. Which makes me expect stars near the middle to have higher metallicity.

"This 'storm' in the 'Teacup' means that the jet-driven process in which a black hole is removing or destroying star-forming material may be much more typical than we knew before, and could be a crucial piece in the puzzle of understanding how the galaxies we see around us were formed,"

Yes, LaViolette's continuous creation model has been predicting exactly this for a long, long time, in spite of the fierce insistence of the more prevalent merger maniacs so doggedly infatuated with the GR and the Huge Bang Fantasy. Time to wake up from the mania. Acknowledge the obvious from recent observations.

Accretion models cannot explain these massive outflows. Obviously the gas must originate from within the core. Obviously Holmes.

movementiseternal

This is not unexpected if anyone actually bothered to read the paper much less the surrounding literature. It has been suggested for some time that small scale jets drive quasar outflows, this is just a very nice set of observations to support that in at least some cases. It's not a new suggestion that radio quiet AGN do host limited jets.

movementiseternal

You guys miss the point. Many of these objects have masses close to or even exceeding a full percent of a galaxy's mass, and they are like the size of the Solar System.

I think Quarks and Pions and stuff starts to not matter too much at that point.

If charge is stronger, the black hole eats opposite charge and blows the other away. If there is no charge it just eats...until it runs out of matter within it's local gravity well...then when the galaxy starts to stabilize again, it just waits for the next ejected star or galactic merger to happen...then it eats some more.

The way the Schwartzchild Radius formula works, all black holes eventually eat themselves out of fuel faster than the environment can replace it, because ordinary objects follow different orbital mechanics than objects near a black hole's accretion disk, which is pretty much the distance of anything with it's own surface escape velocity being that of a Solar mass star or less.

A 400 million solar mass object projects an gravity well such that the escape velocity of 1000km/s is still matched even at a distance of 11.22LIGHT YEARS from the object. To put that in persepective, Sun's escape velocity from the surface is a little less than that.

That produces an escape velocity equal to Earth's surface escape velocity even at a distance of 83400 light years.

Of course this is not noticed (mostly) from inside the other reference frame, because all objects of similar distance are falling roughly in synchronization.

I think the point here is the object of this magnitude is stupid hard to conceive in human terms, but just the concept that it's gravity is still as strong as Earth's surface after 83000 light years is an indicator of how rigged a SMBH is. It even makes a stellar mass black hole look like nothing in comparison.

' "It appears that a supermassive black hole is explosively heating and blasting around the gas in this galaxy and, as a result, is transforming it from an actively star-forming galaxy into one devoid of gas that can no longer form stars,"

The key word here is 'explosively'. This again is consistent with LaViolette's superwave model, Fermi Bubbles, and active galactic cores that can turn on and off rather suddenly. And now for those not paying attention, NASA has weighed in on the evidence with observations of core ejection in all directions at near warp speeds! Explain that with accretion models, or get blown away. Kind of makes a lot of astrophysicists career paths seem rather wasted.